Joslyn Art Museum hosts a selection of temporary special exhibitions annually. These feature works from other museums, institutions, and private collections worldwide, or represent an aspect of Joslyn's own permanent collection. Special exhibitions are limited-time engagements and are most often free with regular Museum admission (exhibitions with an additional entrance fee are noted).

Organized by National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature (Abilene, TX) to mark their 20th anniversary.

Melissa Sweet has illustrated over 100 books as well as many toys, puzzles, and games. She garnered Caldecott Honors for Jen Bryant’s A River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams and The Right Word: Roget and His Thesaurus. She authored and illustrated Carmine: A Little More Red; Tupelo Rides the Rails; Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade; and, most recently, Some Writer! The Story of E. B. White, a New York Times Best Illustrated book. A Mind's Eye Gallery exhibition.

Pattern and Purpose brings together thirty-four masterpieces made between the first decades of the 1800s and the turn of the twenty-first century, ranging from early whole-cloth quilts, carefully-pieced Lemoyne stars, and embroidered botanical “best quilts” to more recent “art quilts” by contemporary makers. Bold in design and pattern, they reveal their maker’s skill — from complex geometric designs that would feel at home in a gallery of Pop Art to delicate patterns drawn from nature.

This exhibition will have a ticket fee. $10 general public adults; $5
college students with ID; free for Joslyn members and youth ages 17 and
younger.

Celebrate the 150th anniversary of the “Meeting of the Rails” at Promontory Summit, Utah in 1869 through photographs and stereographs of Andrew Joseph Russell and Alfred A. Hart. Organized with the Union Pacific Railroad Museum, this exhibition traces the construction of the transcontinental railroad across the American West.

Through a conceptual approach to documentary photography, Richard Mosse (Irish, b. 1980) studies localized conflicts that have broad social, political, and humanitarian implications. His most well-known work employs photographic methods or materials originally developed for the military, such as reconnaissance infrared film. Joslyn’s exhibition will feature a selection of works from Mosse’s recent series, Heat Maps, which chronicles the refugee crisis that has gripped Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa over the last several years. Heat Maps documents refugee camps and staging sites using a powerful telephoto military-grade camera that can detect thermal radiation, including body heat, at a great distance. Mosse uses the camera against its intended purpose of border and combat surveillance to map landscapes of human displacement. Reading heat as both metaphor and index, these images reveal the migrants’ struggle for survival that is witnessed, yet still ignored by many.
A Riley CAP Gallery exhibition.

This exhibition brings together over 60 works by contemporary African-American artists focusing on important issues of racial, gender, and sexual identity; ongoing narratives of racial inequality in the United States; poverty; racial stereotyping; and the power of protest. Through painting, photography, works on paper, sculpture, installation, and video, these nationally and internationally recognized black artists offer a challenging account of race in the United States and how our shared history continues to shape the ways we interact and engage with our fellow citizens today.

This exhibition will have a ticket fee. $10 general public adults; $5
college students with ID (tickets for those with a UNMC student ID are free); free for Joslyn members and youth ages 17 and
younger. Free First Weekends (30 Americans admission is free to all the first weekend of each month).